Chancellor George Osborne got a lot of flak for tweeting a picture of himself eating a gourmet burger and this tweet from Eric Pickles can only make the situation worse. The communities and local government secretary was preparing his speech for this year’s Local Government Association Conference and decided to pastiche the chancellor's tweet, replacing the ‘upmarket takeaway’ with what appears to be a fancy salad.

Communities secretary Eric Pickles' desire for every Englishman to put the remnants of their chicken tikka masala in their bin without having to wait a fortnight for it to be collected may be moving a step closer.